Shadow of the Hangman Read online

  Still wondering whom the beautiful woman in the carriage had been, Peter Skillen walked quickly on his way.

  ‘Holy Jesus!’ exclaimed Tom O’Gara. ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘You’ve done a good job,’ said Moses Dagg, grudgingly.

  ‘We could never have written anything like this.’

  ‘It’s bound to make him take notice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the scrivener with an oily smirk.

  Since neither of the sailors could read as well as him, he’d read out the document to them with ponderous slowness. They’d been amazed at the way he’d turned their angry demands into a calm and persuasive narrative. Against his will, Jubal Nason had appended a threat of what would happen if their requirements were not granted. They were thrilled at the result. Couched in educated phrases, the document was written in a practised hand by a talented scrivener. O’Gara thrust the money he’d borrowed from his cousin into the man’s hand.

  Nason knew that their pleas would be studiously ignored. Even though their account of the massacre at the prison had cogency, it was bedevilled by the death threat they insisted on issuing. Their word would count for little against that of the governor and his men. The fact remained that they were fugitives and there’d be a reward for their capture, especially as it would remove a potential danger to the life of the Home Secretary. Nason could feel temptation rising up inside him. Only the fear of repercussions from Dermot Fallon had held him back from informing on the two Americans.

  When they’d finished poring over the document, they signed their names at the bottom of the last page. Both men had the unquenchable zeal of fanatics.

  ‘This is one of two things,’ boasted O’Gara. ‘It’s either a key to let all our friends out of that stinking prison or it’s the Home Secretary’s death warrant.’

  ‘He must do what we tell him,’ said Dagg, grimly.

  ‘We know the truth of what happened. We saw it with our own eyes.’

  ‘Captain Shortland will only tell lies.’

  Nason folded the document. ‘I’ll deliver this tonight,’ he promised.

  ‘No,’ said O’Gara, ‘I’ll put it through the letterbox.’

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘That’s not the point, Mr Nason. I want you to show us where this Home Secretary can be found. We may need to go back there one day to kill him.’

  Ruth Levitt was quick and methodical. When she’d cleaned one room, she took the candelabrum through to the next one. After setting it down, she worked by its light to go through a set routine. She was halfway through polishing a sideboard when she heard the click of the letterbox. Taking the candelabrum, she lit her way to the front door and noticed the letter on the carpet. When she picked it up, she saw that it was addressed to the Home Secretary so she went along to his office and put it on his desk to await his arrival.

  As she returned to her chores, it never occurred to her that the missive she’d just picked up would cause so much grief and apprehension.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Having spoken to the night watchman at the Home Office, Peter Skillen had a clear idea of the time when Anne Horner usually left the premises. She was, it transpired, a creature of habit, cleaning the different rooms in a set order and invariably finishing with the one belonging to Viscount Sidmouth. After exchanging a few pleasantries with the night watchman, she went back to her lodging by means of her customary route. To make sure that she never took an alternative way home, Peter also talked to her landlady, Joan Claydon, who confirmed that the cleaner always came back down the long, tree-lined lane where Peter had earlier encountered trouble, and that she arrived back at the house around the same time each morning. A light sleeper, Joan usually woke up when her lodger returned.

  Anne Horner had been watched. The person or persons who’d abducted her had chosen the ideal spot on her nocturnal journey home. Peter arrived at the lane that night at approximately the time when Anne would have walked down it. Unlike her, he took precautions. He had a dagger in his belt and a Manton pistol, his favourite, concealed under his coat. He also carried a lantern that could be used as an auxiliary weapon. As it happened, it was called into use soon after he’d entered the lane. A foul-smelling old man suddenly lurched drunkenly out of the shadows at him, only to be knocked back on his heels by a glancing blow from the lantern. Dazed and in pain, he fell against a wall then bounced off it. As the man bent forward to expel a stream of vomit, Peter stepped out of reach then walked away.

  He did not expect any real danger. In arresting Reuben Grigg, he’d already rid the lane of its greatest threat. Criminals like him were territorial. Once they’d taken over a particular area, they were rarely challenged. Anyone tempted to operate in the lane would first have had to engage in a fight to the death. No doubt they’d decide that it was safer to respect the territory marked out by Griggs and stay well clear of it. Until his disappearance became common knowledge, nobody would try to replace him.

  The lantern served its purpose. Enabling him to look in every nook and cranny, it also guided his footsteps past the accumulated refuse and human waste that littered the way. The light caught the attention of someone who withdrew into an alley and waited for him to reach it. Sensing trouble ahead, Peter slipped a hand inside his coat to hold the butt of his pistol. In the event, no weapon was needed. The person who slipped out of the alley to accost him was a young woman.

  ‘Have you lost your way, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ he replied, holding the lantern up so that he could see her.

  ‘You look lonely to me, sir.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’ve a room nearby. Would you like to come there?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Her voice had real pathos. ‘Don’t you like me, sir?’

  Peter was no stranger to the blandishments of prostitutes. London had brothels galore and areas where whores routinely roamed the streets after dark in search of custom. In the course of his work, he’d had to pursue suspects into some of the most notorious parts of the capital so nothing surprised him. Any offers made to Peter had always been met with a polite rebuff. What upset him in this instance was that she was a game-pullet, a prostitute little more than a child. Short, skinny and wearing a ragged taffeta dress, she had a forlorn prettiness.

  ‘Are you always here at this time?’ he asked.

  ‘I can be here whenever you wish, sir,’ she said, plucking at his sleeve.

  He detached her hand. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I meant no harm, sir.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  Hearing the authority in his voice, she drew back as if about to flee the scene.

  ‘Have you come to arrest me, sir?’ she asked, anxiously.

  ‘No,’ he told her. ‘If you help me, there may be a reward for you.’

  She brightened. ‘I’ll do anything you wish, sir. My mother taught me.’

  ‘I’m not buying your favours. I’m after something else.’

  Speaking gently in order not to frighten her away, Peter explained what he wanted.

  Unfortunately, the girl was unable to tell one day from another so she could not be sure if she’d been in the lane on the night he mentioned. He got a disturbing insight into a life robbed of its childhood and brutalised by the demands of the oldest profession. Peter’s instinct was somehow to save her but she was too far beyond redemption. Slow of speech and dull-witted, the girl could offer no real assistance. He was on the point of walking away when a memory stirred in her fuzzy brain.

  ‘I don’t know if I was here, sir,’ she said, ‘but mother was.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘She’s always here.’

  ‘Where is your mother now?’

  ‘She’s with someone.’

  The girl led him down the alley until they came to a small house with perished brickwork and a broken window. As they approached, the front door opened and a middle-aged man i
n rough attire hurried out, pulling on his coat before disappearing in the opposite direction. Taken into the house, Peter winced as the reek of rotten food, mustiness and sheer despair hit him. The girl opened the door to the back room on the ground floor. Candles illumined a pitiful scene. A bony woman with rumpled hair and a powdered face was sitting on the edge of the bed. Completely naked, she was reaching for a filthy shift. She was amazed to see someone as respectable as Peter. Tossing the shift away, she exposed her toothless gums in a grin of welcome.

  ‘It costs more for the two of us, sir,’ she warned.

  ‘I only wish to ask a few questions,’ he said.

  ‘Has Lily already seen to you?’

  Believing that she’d been robbed of a client, she looked accusingly at her daughter. The girl shook her head violently. Peter assured the woman that he was not interested in purchasing the services either of mother and daughter. Meeting the girl had been distressing enough but the older woman’s appearance was even more upsetting. Worn, undernourished and raddled, she looked old enough to be the girl’s grandmother but, when he studied her face, Peter was horrified to realise that she was probably around the same age as his own wife.He couldn’t bear to look at the deathly white bruised body with its sagging breasts and protruding ribs.

  After dismissing her daughter with a wave, she stood up.

  ‘How can I help you, sir?’

  ‘It depends on how good a memory you have.’

  ‘Oh, it’s very good, sir,’ she replied, treating him to another view of her bare gums. ‘I forgets nothing.’

  By the time that Sidmouth arrived at his desk that morning, a fair amount of correspondence had built up on his desk. He worked sedulously through it. Much of it had come from departments of government, which were passing on their problems for his consideration and making him bewail once again the fact that the Home Office was regarded as the place into which political colleagues could toss unwanted or tiresome material. It was only when he reached the bottom of the pile that he found something more arresting. It was the letter delivered at night. He read the document three times before summoning Bernard Grocott and passing it over to him. As the undersecretary worked his way slowly through it, his mobile features registered interest, astonishment, unease, alarm and outright terror in that order.

  ‘This is extremely disconcerting, my lord.’

  ‘It sheds a very different light on the events at Dartmoor.’

  Grocott handed the letter back to him. ‘I agree,’ he said, ‘but only if it’s a true account and not some grotesque hoax.’

  ‘The detail is too exact for it to be a hoax and it’s signed by the two prisoners who are known to have escaped. Captain Shortland did warn us about Thomas O’Gara. Evidently, the fellow is determined to be the governor’s nemesis.’

  ‘However did he reach London?’

  ‘He must be a very resourceful man.’

  ‘I deplore the way he tries to bully you, my lord,’ said Grocott, ‘but there’s no doubt that he can marshal an argument. This list of demands is both lucid and – dare I say it – oddly persuasive.’

  ‘But it’s rendered invalid by the threats against my life,’ said Sidmouth, angrily. ‘I’d never bow to coercion of this kind. If two escaped prisoners think they can scare me into introducing new legislation into the statute book, they know nothing of my character or of the way that government operates. At the same time,’ he continued, moderating his tone, ‘certain points are raised in the description of the mutiny that should bear close examination. If you put this document beside Captain Shortland’s version of the same events, you’ll see enormous discrepancies.’

  ‘I side with the governor.’

  ‘Let the joint commission do its work, Grocott. They need to see this deposition from Thomas O’Gara and Moses Dagg. Though I abhor their attempt at intimidating me, I have to admit to a sneaking admiration for them.’

  ‘Admiration?’ repeated the other in surprise.

  ‘They could so easily have ignored the American prisoners left behind and simply have taken a ship back to their homeland. In remaining here to lead what they foolishly deem to be a kind of crusade, they’ve placed themselves in danger. That takes courage.’

  ‘I care nothing for their safety, my lord, but I am concerned about yours.’

  ‘They’ve no means to carry out their threat.’

  ‘Yet a moment ago, you were saying how resourceful they were.’

  ‘That’s true,’ conceded Sidmouth, uneasily.

  ‘You need immediate protection.’

  ‘They’ll not do anything until they know the outcome of the commission. It’s clear that they’re aware of its existence because they refer to it in their letter. That can only mean that they read about it in the newspapers.’

  ‘They may not wait for the commission to pronounce its verdict,’ argued Grocott. ‘There’s a hectoring tone in their demands and an underlying impatience. I fear that, if they don’t get what they want soon, they may decide to exact revenge and you will be their target.’

  ‘I don’t feel in any danger.’

  ‘Neither did our last Prime Minister.’

  The reminder was so painful that it made Sidmouth twitch involuntarily. Three years earlier, Spencer Perceval, a well-respected politician with an evangelical air about him, had been shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons by a bankrupt merchant, John James Bellingham. The fact that a Prime Minister could be murdered so easily in broad daylight had sent tremors through the political classes and every Member of Parliament became more watchful.

  Sidmouth regained his composure. ‘The assassin was clearly deranged.’

  ‘Do you think that Thomas O’Gara and Moses Dagg are of sound mind?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Palpably, they are capable of reason.’

  ‘Yet they’re driven by a dark fanaticism.’

  ‘They have a missionary zeal, I grant you.’

  ‘They’re obsessed, my lord, and obsessions make people unpredictable. I beg of you to take precautions. Before you submit that document to the joint commission, show it to someone who can mount a guard on you. This is work for the Runners.’

  ‘You have a point,’ admitted Sidmouth, ‘but the best defence is to eliminate the threat altogether. The Runners can protect me from attack but we need someone else, if we are to catch these fugitives from Dartmoor. I’m expecting a report from Peter Skillen fairly soon. He and his brother are the men for this task. They’ll know how to smoke out O’Gara and Dagg.’

  Though Dermot Fallon and his family had given the fugitives a warm Irish welcome, they were far less popular with the neighbours. Dagg, in particular, aroused a lot of hostility. His was the only black face in the rookery and it made him a figure of suspicion. He was blamed simply for being there and, when he gave an innocuous smile to a pretty young woman in the street, her common-law husband was inflamed with jealousy. The man lay in wait for Dagg then confronted him as he emerged out of the tenement. Short, stocky and in his twenties, the man was a chimney sweep by trade and, ironically, as black as the sailor.

  ‘Keep away from my wife,’ he warned.

  Dagg bristled. ‘Don’t give me orders.’

  ‘I saw the way you looked at her.’

  ‘I don’t know who your wife is and I don’t care.’

  ‘She hates niggers as much as I do.’

  ‘Watch your tongue,’ advised Tom O’Gara, standing beside his friend. ‘Moses won’t take insults from anybody.’

  ‘He’ll get more than insults from me. If he grins at my wife like a frigging monkey again, I’ll knock him from here to Africa.’

  Dagg bunched his fists. ‘Who’re you calling a monkey?’ he demanded.

  ‘You’d better apologise while you can,’ said O’Gara to the man. ‘If you call him names, he gets upset.’

  ‘I’m the one who deserves an apology,’ declared the chimney sweep, ‘and so does Meg. This animal leered at her.’

  The raised voices ha
d brought a number of people out into the street and they formed a ring around the two fugitives. There was a sense of general resentment against the newcomers. When Dagg remained silent, the chimney sweep decided to inflict some punishment. In the belief that he could fell the man with one punch, he swung a fist with murderous intent. The blow was easily parried and so were all the succeeding attempts at hitting his opponent.

  The crowd drew back as the men circled each other. O’Gara was certain of the outcome. Dagg was the veteran of dozens of tavern brawls in various ports. They’d helped him to develop teak-hard fists and an ability to throw an attacker off balance. It was exactly what he did with the chimney sweep. After dodging and weaving, he stood still to invite a punch then drew back sharply as it was delivered. All that the irate chimney sweep did was to explore fresh air. The next second, he was hit by a powerful hook that caught him on the side of the head and made him stagger. Dagg followed up with a series of solid punches to his body and head before knocking him unconscious with an uppercut that drew a gasp of fear from the crowd. While the chimney sweep slumped to the ground with blood gushing from his nose, Dagg turned to the others.

  ‘Would anyone else like to try their luck?’ he invited.

  ‘No, Moses,’ said O’Gara, ‘they’re too scared.’

  ‘It was a fair fight. You all saw that.’ There was a murmur of agreement. ‘It’s over now. You can disappear.’

  The crowd slowly dispersed. Two men helped the chimney sweep to his feet and dragged him away. The fugitives traded a laugh.

  ‘I enjoyed that,’ said Dagg, flexing his hands.

  ‘It was stupid of him to call you a nigger,’ observed O’Gara with amusement. ‘Did you see the colour of that idiot? He was ten shades blacker than you.’

  Alfred Hale was still asleep when the message was delivered to his home. Dressing quickly, he set off and met up with Micah Yeomans at The Peacock Inn, the public house that was their unofficial headquarters. By way of a greeting, Hale yawned in the other man’s face.